


I Know It's the Last Day on Earth

by tiger_moran



Category: Professor Challenger stories, The Lost World - Arthur Conan Doyle, The Poison Belt
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Comfort Sex, Cuddling & Snuggling, Holding Hands, Kissing, Last Day On Earth, Love, M/M, Missing Scene, Sleeping Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-22
Updated: 2014-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-10 00:52:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2004678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiger_moran/pseuds/tiger_moran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the Earth passes through the poison belt, Edward Malone and Lord John Roxton spend what they believe will be their last night alive together in Professor Challenger's house, but there is a surprise in store for them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You need to be familiar with Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Poison Belt' (the sequel to 'The Lost World'. It can be found online for free) for this to make sense. This story consists of a slightly alternate storyline/missing scenes from that and won't make a great deal of sense without knowing what happens in that story. Some parts that do follow that story more exactly (such as their trip to London) are skipped over very briefly as I don't want to lift entire paragraphs of the original story. There are one or two bits of dialogue however that I have had to take directly from the original story. Most notably I think, Challenger's lines at the end of chapter one are from the original story.

    “Dooced queer, how things turn out,” Roxton remarks, gazing out through the window towards where, over the horizon, Brighton still burns. It is the light of the pale new moon though, not of that distant pyre, which softly illuminates his features – that strong curved nose, the hollow cheeks, the furrows in his forehead, features all so wonderfully familiar to Malone. “I woke up this mornin’ hardly imaginin’ tonight would be my last night alive on earth, now here we are waitin’ for our lives to be snuffed out like so many candles. Still…” He turns his head to regard Malone. “If I might be so bold as to say…” He lowers his gaze, and this is a first that Malone has seen. This old soldier, this bold hunter, has faced all manner of adversaries from tigers to pterodactyls and now even the impending end of almost all life on earth without fear, yet suddenly close to him like this, Roxton seems suddenly almost… _nervous_. He clears his throat. “What I mean to say is, this ain’t exactly the way I planned to exit this life – less with a bang and more with a whimper, what – yet I cannot think of anyone else I’d rather spend my last night with than you, young fellah.”

    Malone looks back at him in the moonlight, thinking suddenly of all that they have gone through in the past, all the times their lives were in mortal danger from all manner of strange wild beasts and human monsters, all that they have endured and survived together, yet all those perilous adventures have now led them here, to this moment, to this sealed room, to stand together waiting helplessly for the oxygen to run out and the poison to wreak its deadly effects.

    When Roxton’s hand steals into his he squeezes it tightly, holding onto him as if Roxton is the only stable thing in an unstable world. “John,” he says, and need say no more. Roxton understands that much – understands that when he takes Malone in his arms and inclines his head like so to press a kiss to Malone’s mouth he will not be rejected.

    Malone closes his eyes, savouring that brief brush of their lips and the feel of Roxton’s warm, strong, lithe form pressed against him. Only after a second or two does he open his eyes and think to glance across at the others in the room. He need have no fear from them though. Summerlee, tired of his bickering with Challenger, now dozes in his chair, while Mrs Challenger remains focused on her husband. The great man himself is still engrossed in examining his slide under the microscope, muttering all the while, as if perhaps he is trying to communicate with the amoeba.

    “I doubt the old dear’d notice us if we stripped naked and danced the polka,” Roxton remarks with a wry smile. “It seems he finds that little amoeba chappy of his far better company. Perhaps he might name it George Junior, what!”

    “I almost feel slighted,” Malone says with a smile of his own. He dares to lift his hand to Roxton’s face, to stroke a few strands of that auburn-turning-to-grey hair off his forehead. “John,” he says again, remembering anew how good that name sounds, how wonderful it was when they could drop all the pretence and formalities and exist, however briefly, not as Lord John Roxton and Edward Malone but as John and Ned. “I wish we could…”

    “I know.”

    “I want to…”

    “I know, young-fellah-my-lad, I do know.” Roxton’s voice is slightly hoarse; his pupils are wide and likely not entirely from the gloom, and Malone is in a similar condition. “I wish we could too, but we cannot in here and that is that. There is a time and a place for all that, and, well…”

    “The end of the world is not the time or the place?” Malone manages a grin now, despite this sense of melancholy stealing over him, not just because everything is about to end, but also because he to be denied that final act of intimacy with Roxton. He knows perfectly well that they cannot leave this chamber, nor retreat to some corner of it. An embrace, a kiss even, may go unnoticed but anything more is unthinkable.

    Roxton’s moustache twitches as he grins himself. “I’m afraid not, young fellah.”

    “Then at least sit with me,” Malone says. If they are to be denied anything else he will at least not be denied this.

    And so they sit close together, perhaps not quite so close as they dare, but once more Roxton’s hand seeks out Malone’s; once more Malone squeezes Roxton’s hand, and smiles at him.

    The night passes slowly, until after a time the only sound is that of Mrs Challenger quietly sobbing, and then her husband’s soft whispering to her.

    “You need not stay with me all night, you know,” Roxton says, when Summerlee is still sleeping and Professor Challenger has taken Mrs Challenger through to the inner dressing room. “If I’m keepin’ you from your scribblin’…”

    “You’re not.”

    “You reporter chappies like to record everythin’, I know that.”

    “I’d like to stay with you.”

    Roxton leans towards him, taking this chance to press another kiss to Malone’s mouth. This time it is a little deeper, a little more open-mouthed, a lot more passionate. When it is finished he sinks back against the settee with a little sigh of satisfaction. “You can do both, my lad,” he points out.

    “Well, I… I’d like to get a record down of all that has occurred, if not for us but perhaps… perhaps some future generation might one day discover it.” It is a futile hope, surely, but it so goes against Malone’s nature not to at least make the effort to record this singular event for posterity when perhaps no-one else remains to do so.

    “Some distant descendent of George Junior?” Roxton guffaws and waves a tanned hand idly. “You write, young fellah; whatever helps you get through the night.”

    “You wouldn’t mind?”

    “Not at all. Reckon I might follow Summerlee’s example and take a nap too. Just be sure to put down how you’re spendin’ your final hours in the company of a devilishly handsome man, what!” He winks as he settles himself more comfortably into the cushions.

    So Malone returns to his note-taking, whilst still remaining close to Roxton. Professor Challenger returns some minutes later to announce that Mrs Challenger is asleep, before he goes over to work calmly at the central table as if he has all the time in the world to finish his studies. If he notices Lord Roxton’s close proximity to Malone he chooses not to comment on it, but then perhaps he is truly oblivious to those matters which are wholly irrelevant to his researches. Summerlee meanwhile sleeps on even through the infernal screeching of Challenger’s quill pen, emitting an occasional snore.

    After a time Malone sets down his pen and takes out his watch. Five minutes past eleven he notes as he winds it up, wondering as he does so why he is even bothering. Come tomorrow he will no longer need a working watch. He looks towards Roxton now, noting that the older man lies back with his eyes closed. Yet seemingly when he feels Malone’s gaze fall upon him once more, or perhaps noting Malone’s very slight shifting of position, Roxton at once opens his eyes and regards the younger man again.

    “Still writin’, Neddy my boy?”

    “I thought perhaps… I might cease for a time.”

    “If you like.”

    “I also thought I might sit closer to you again for a minute or two.”

    “I’d like that.” Roxton closes his eyes but shuffles closer towards Malone, lifting his arm to let the younger man burrow under it.

    Malone leans against Roxton, resting his head against the hunter’s shoulder, settling contentedly into his embrace. It feels warm and safe, being so close to Roxton, and he doesn’t want to sleep and waste the precious few hours he has left, but it is so soothing like this, listening to Roxton’s slow, steady breathing as he drifts to sleep. It cannot hurt to stay here for a few minutes with him, just a few minutes, then he will continue writing.

 

   Malone awakens with a start, wondering for a second or two where he is and whose arm that is around him, until he remembers.

   “Ned, mm,” Roxton mumbles above him, and sleepily places a kiss on top of Malone’s head before apparently passing back into full sleep.

    Wide awake now, Malone very carefully extracts himself from beneath Roxton’s arm enough so he may straighten up to look at his watch, trying not to disturb his companion too much. Three-thirty a.m. Close to five more hours gone, close to five more hours nearer to death, and he has wasted them in sleep. And yet… he turns his head to regard Roxton once more. He looks so peaceful like this, this often rather bloodthirsty old hunter sleeping like a babe with his legs almost tucked beneath him. Malone cannot regret those lost hours now, spending them in such a way, sleeping beside this man with that strong arm around him.

    He glances towards Challenger but the professor is asleep in his chair now also, snoring volubly, while Summerlee slumbers on. There is no sign of Mrs Challenger so presumably she is still asleep in the dressing room. Malone though feels very much wide awake now, as if he could not sleep another wink tonight. What a sad, mournful scene, he thinks, with dawn’s first cold light beginning to steal into the room and washing everything out. Even Roxton, such a colourful character ordinarily, seems grey now, and that thought causes a sharp pang in Malone’s chest, not at the thought of his own imminent death but at the thought of Roxton becoming truly washed of all colour, wholly lifeless.

    The old soldier stirs a little now, opening his eyes again after a few seconds. “Ned?”

    “I’m still here.” Malone settles beside him, letting Roxton slip his arm around him again.

    “Are you cold?”

    “I’m perfectly all right.”

    “Can’t sleep?”

    “I thought perhaps… I should not waste any more of what little time remains in sleep.”

    “Mm.” Roxton yawns and stretches out his long legs, straightening up a little.

    “You go back to sleep if you wish.”

    “No, my lad, I’d rather stay up with you now.”

    Malone sets aside the paper and nestles his face into the crook of Roxton’s shoulder momentarily. Perhaps they should talk of old times, of reminisces, of regrets even, but he cannot bring himself to utter such words. To do so would seem rather maudlin and a pointless waste of the precious oxygen. “John,” is all he says, then, “I…”

     “I know, Ned.”

    They have never spoken of love save in a more abstract manner, when Malone once confided in Roxton of his failure with Gladys Potts, née Hungerton, but never in regards to each other, not during their time together on their return expedition to Maple White Land, nor since, and not even the end of nearly all life on earth can change this.

   “I’m immensely glad you’re here,” Malone says at last, musing on how different things might be had not Professor Challenger summoned him and Roxton both. If he had been facing death without seeing Roxton one last time… the thought is too painful to contemplate for more than a few seconds.

   “I’m glad you’re here too, young fellah.”

   They settle down together again, embracing each other, not to sleep now but to watch the sunrise, the very last no doubt that any man will ever see. It is a beautiful sight as the sun heaves its way over the horizon, replacing the orange glow of Brighton still burning with its own fiery light, but the scene is spoilt by the sun shining down on poor Austin sprawling in the yard, so white and still in the light of dawn. Both men regard him with solemnity, both pitying him and the whole of the dead humankind he represents, but perhaps also envying him – just a little – as he has already passed peacefully beyond all realisation of what is to occur. With the others still asleep, it feels for a moment as if he and Roxton could be the very last two people alive on earth. While there is much comfort to be found in the other’s presence, it is a sobering thought.

    Malone curls tighter against Roxton’s side, pressing his face to the hunter’s chest so he does not have to see Austin’s dead form any longer, and so they remain until obliged to move at last by a choking sense that seizes both of them.

     “The sands of our lives are nearly runnin’ out, I fear,” Roxton says, stroking Malone’s back gently.

    Malone sits up. “I’d best change the cylinder over.” As he moves reluctantly away from Roxton’s warmth to change over the last oxygen cylinder, everyone around them begins to stir, beginning with Mrs Challenger calling from the inner room, then Challenger stirring from his sleep, and Summerlee too, sitting up and shivering. No longer are the pair alone, but there seems little reassurance to be gained from this knowledge when their time is so limited.

    Cups of steaming cocoa brought in by Mrs Challenger improve the mood a little, as does the smoking of cigarettes and for Summerlee his pipe, although these serve to have the opposite effect on the physical atmosphere in the room, forcing Challenger to have to open the ventilator for a time.

     “How long, Challenger?” Roxton asks.

    The professor answers with a shrug. “Possibly three hours.”

    Yet it seems only a short time later all are beginning to gasp for breath, the room feeling horridly oppressive and unbearably close. As Challenger confirms Roxton’s suspicion that this last cylinder is defective and Summerlee launches into a bitter tirade about this, Roxton and Malone instinctively find themselves stepping closer to each other once more.

    The end has come, and all know it. All that remains is to make the decision as to how best to end it now.

    “Better be poisoned than stifled,” declares Roxton, a sentiment to which the others reluctantly agree. Roxton joins hands with Malone again, drawing him even closer and linking his fingers through the younger man’s. Even if the others perceive the true intimacy that exists between them and disapprove of this, it can hardly matter now. “Good-bye, young fellah.” He squeezes Malone’s hand and Malone squeezes back, as he does so trying to force back the tears that blur his eyes, not from fear (with John Roxton by his side he is not afraid to die) but at the crushing sense of horror at the knowledge that with their deaths the entire human race will likely cease to be.

     For some seconds though he is forced to delay his passing and to break his hold on Roxton’s hand, to retrieve and hand over the requested field-glass to Challenger so that the professor may break the window with it. But he returns to sit by the old hunter’s side and takes his hand once more, holding onto him tightly as, with a booming cry of, “Into the hands of the Power that made us we render ourselves again!” Professor Challenger violently hurls the field-glass through the window.

    Glass shatters and tinkles and wind gusts forcibly through the broken pane. Malone had screwed his eyes tight shut at the moment of impact. He draws a deep breath into his lungs, all the better to inhale the poison and get it over with quicker, and through a haze he can hear Roxton’s deep inhalation too as he bravely looks death in the face. He does not know which of them makes the move, likely it is both, but they are clutching onto each other full length now in these last precious seconds, as the sound of falling glass dies away and the breeze whistles in their ears and then… stunned silence.

    Malone straightens up; so does Roxton, though their hands remained joined, and they look to each other in amazement, then towards the others in the room. As if in a dream Challenger’s voice at last cuts through the haze of confusion that has entered the room along with that sweet breath of wind.

    “We are back in normal conditions,” he cries, though even his voice, still strong, sounds unusually cut through with some strong emotion. “The world has cleared the poison belt, but we alone of all mankind are saved.”


	2. Chapter 2

   For Malone disbelief soon begins to yield to despair. To think that nearly all life had been extinguished was bad enough; to realise that the five of them alone may have survived such an apocalypse… the enormity and the sense of grief over this threatens to engulf him like a great wave. Everyone else has gone, almost everything else has gone, leaving an empty world behind which seems all the worse for how beautiful a summer’s day it is today. It might at least have had the decency to seem miserable out there, but no, the sun still shines stubbornly and brightly down.

    Their journey to London, revealing only that sole other survivor perhaps in that whole city, perhaps in the whole country, perhaps even in the entire world, for all that they know and for all the good it would do them if some person in some distant country had also survived (for supposing some little scattered pockets of people have survived here and there, then what? They cannot be contacted, nor reached; they may as well be on the moon), does nothing to comfort him. It only intensifies his despondency.

    Roxton, intent on his driving and behaving in his cool and collected manner, only emitting his not infrequent ejaculations of, “Pretty doin’s! What!” at the sight of every cluster of dead bodies which he must carefully steer the car around, hardly helps improve Malone’s mood. Perhaps if the two of them could have stayed behind at Rotherfield and sought comfort in each other’s arms Malone might feel a little better, though he knows they absolutely had to investigate further to ascertain if anyone else had survived and they have to stay together as a group. He knows too that Roxton is not a heartless man, even though his priorities and sense of morality may sometimes seem questionable even to Malone. The soldier and hunter has seen much death in his adventurous life, more than Malone has ever glimpsed, and as such is far more inured to such horrors, though even he is not unaffected by death on such an immense and catastrophic scale. His exclamations are his way of coping and carrying on, rather than breaking down in futile sobs at the sight of all those dead children or women or men or even at the sight of all the animals, the dogs and cats lying stiff in the street or the quaint gardens of their homes, the horses on their knees between the shafts of their vehicles or sprawled unmoving in the roads beneath their equally lifeless riders, or the sheep and cattle stretched out rigidly in the fields and the birds that have plummeted dead from the sky all over, and his priority at present is to drive them safely to London and back, not to dwell on matters that are beyond his control. Still when he exclaims, “Pretty doin’s! What!” for perhaps the seventh or eighth time, Malone is torn between leaning across and slapping him or bursting into hysterical, half-sobbing laughter. In the event he does neither, but it is a close call indeed.

  

   Back at Rotherfield, back in Professor Challenger’s home, Malone’s spirits remain weighed down. This crushing sense of depression feels almost as stifling as the poison that threatened to steal his life away earlier. To see so much death and destruction, worse perhaps to hear that oppressive silence that should have been filled with so much life, from the buzzing of the bees to the tweeting of the birds right up to the chatter, the movements, the doings of people going about their lives, all that now gone, leaving the land blanketed in silence… it makes it near impossible for him to find some glimmer of humour or hope or anything positive in the situation.

    The others are downstairs, seemingly making plans, but Malone wonders what is the point? The rest of the world is dead and surely all the deceased will soon begin to decay, likely contaminating the water, the air even, and what if the poison itself returns to finish them off? He almost hopes it will to spare them a life of such despair and grief and horror. Though through isolating himself from the other survivors he is likely making himself feel even more wretched and making the situation seem even more hopeless than it truly is, he cannot bring himself to go and join the rest of the group. He cherishes a vague hope that perhaps Roxton might be concerned enough about his absence to come and find him, but then Roxton is perhaps thriving on this situation. He can no longer be a soldier or a hunter but he’s still a natural leader and highly skilled at planning how to proceed; perhaps he is in his element now as they work out what to do next.

    Malone is absorbed in his dark thoughts, staring gloomily out of the window, when there comes a soft tap at the door. At first he fails to notice it; only upon the second lot of rapping does he consciously take note of it and move towards the door. Opening it he finds Roxton standing there.

    “Didn’t like the thought of you shuttin’ yourself away alone up here, young fellah.”

    “I’d rather be on my own.”

    “Would you really though?” Roxton’s eyes meet his, superficially cold but in reality that look is enquiring and deeply concerned.

    “I do not wish to sit amongst the others at present.”

    “Then I’ll sit with you.”

    “You’d rather be with them.”

     Roxton advances into the room, pressing Malone gently backwards, and shuts the door behind him. “I know you may think me a little cold-blooded at times, Ned my boy, but I ain’t heedless of your feelin’s.”

    “I know.”

    “It’s a lot for a young fellah like you to take in. It’s a lot for an older fellah like me even to take in, but I know damned well it must be many times worse for you.” He cups Malone’s head gently in the palm of his hand, stroking his hair softly.

    Malone resists for one moment, just a moment, then realises the foolishness of pretending he does not want Roxton’s comfort. He all but throws himself against the older man, sinking his face against Roxton’s breast. They stand there for some time with their arms around each other, Malone with his head on Roxton’s chest still, hearing his heart beat, reassuring himself that Roxton at least remains alive.

    Only after two or three minutes have passed like this does Malone lift his head and look up into Roxton’s face. Roxton kisses him then, sweetly, tenderly. Save for the fact that it lacks the hesitancy, it reminds Malone very much of their very first kiss so many months ago. Suddenly though Roxton is kissing him more intensely, more passionately, not just upon the mouth but also kissing his way down Malone’s throat, and in this instant Malone wants nothing more than to take Roxton to bed, to strip him naked, to put his hands on his lover’s bare skin and be as close to him as he can possibly be, to remind himself anew that for all he has just lost, he still has John Roxton.

    “Steady, steady young fellah.” Roxton, his mouth quirking into a grin, grasps Malone’s hands briefly, stilling them for a few seconds, as Malone begins to try to get Roxton out of his tweeds. Malone looks up at him, confused. “Allow me to at least lock the door, hmm? Wouldn’t want old Challenger bargin’ in while we’re doin’ the dirty, do we? That’d put even me off my stride, what!”

    At this remark Malone laughs, though rather weakly, and he allows Roxton to withdraw from him to lock the door. Immediately that this is done though he is on Roxton again, kissing him deeply again, with mouths open and tongues meeting, whilst they attempt to divest each other of all their items of clothing without breaking the kiss.

    “I think-” Roxton begins, but is silenced by another desperate kiss which makes him forget what he was about to say even as they stumble over towards the bed, Roxton nearly tripping over his trousers in the process as they begin to fall down his legs.

    At last, with a wry smile, Malone does take pity on him, pausing briefly to kneel and to unlace Roxton’s shoes so he can remove them and the socks and then his trousers and underclothes. None of the items of clothing are treated kindly though; all are scattered haphazardly around the room without much care for where they land. The rest of Malone’s clothing soon joins Roxton’s in being tossed aside, and then Malone falls upon Roxton on the bed, pinning the lean hunter under him, straddling him. Until now, though his hands have roamed across Roxton’s body, he has not touched him between his legs but now as he leans over him, still kissing him fiercely, he grasps Roxton’s prick in his hand and strokes it from root to tip.

    “Ned!” Roxton cries, and he throws back his head as he arches up against Malone. His short fingernails dig into Malone’s back as the younger man continues to stroke him, and then Malone’s cheek is pressed to his and Malone’s mouth is close to his ear, his breath warm, as he says roughly:

    “I want you, John. I want to take you. I want to feel you hot and tight around me, and to hear you whimpering and moaning with pleasure under me.”

    Roxton’s breath comes in sharp pants and there is a strange, dreamy look in his eyes as he looks up at Malone. “Ned,” he says again. “Dearest Neddy. I want… I want that too.” But they cannot, even through their haze of lust they both know that they cannot do it that way at this time. Without something to slick the entrance it is totally impractical and Malone has no wish to cause Roxton any pain.

    Still, when Roxton places little kisses to Malone’s cheek, moving down under his jaw, and when Roxton’s strong hand wraps around his cock, Malone ceases to care about what they cannot do, only about what they can.

    “John,” he breathes. “John.”

    And so they are pressed together, body to body, mouth to mouth, breathing, panting, into each other, almost dizzy with arousal and lack of oxygen (a situation that might, later, perhaps strike them as absurdly comic, given the events of the night before). When they break the kiss it is still only so that Roxton may kiss and gently nip at Malone’s throat, at his shoulder, across his collarbone, so very careful never to harm him, all while they are stroking each other’s lengths in perfect time.

    “Ned,” he says. “My dear Ned, Ned, I’m goin’ to… I…” He tenses and stills, his hand momentarily ceasing its movements on Malone’s prick, clutching onto Malone’s back with his other hand, groaning thickly as he spills into Malone’s palm.

    “All right, John, all right,” Malone soothes, stroking him through his climax.

    It takes Roxton only a few seconds though to regain his composure, and then the tables are turned. Malone finds himself being flipped over, put on his back, with Roxton leaning over him. “All right Neddy, young fellah, your turn,” he says, giving Malone a peculiarly feral smile, and then before Malone can think further upon this Roxton vanishes from up above him and swiftly a warm, wet mouth engulfs his arousal almost to the root and Roxton sucks eagerly.

    “Christ, John.” Now it is Malone’s turn to arch off the bed, to dig his heels into the sheets as his toes nearly curl with the pleasure. He has long known that Lord Roxton is very skilled at this particular act but he does not recall it ever feeling _this_ good before. He fists his hands in Roxton’s greying hair, overwhelmed with the sensations. “John,” he says again, head tipping back to rest on the pillow. “John, I…” And then he forgets words as he comes, spending down Roxton’s throat, losing all awareness for some seconds.

    When he comes back to himself Roxton is nestled behind him, long slim arms wrapped around Malone’s chest. Malone can feel Roxton’s moustache brush the back of his neck as he murmurs to him.

    “Neddy, my dear Ned, it’s all right my dear Ned.”

    Malone twists around in his embrace to face Roxton. With a sleepy, sated smile, he puts his hand to Roxton’s face once more. “Dearest John.”

    Roxton smiles back at him gently, looking almost as far from being a ruthless hunter and soldier at this moment in time as it is possible for him to be whilst still awake. “Reckon we made rather a mess of the professor’s spare room, what!” he remarks with a chuckle.

    Malone runs his fingers through Roxton’s tousled hair and grins himself. “I think he has got other things to worry about at present.” And then the realisation of what he has said and what it means, the memory too of all that death he has seen today, comes back to him. He buries his face against Roxton’s shoulder once more, needing to be close to him still, breathing in his scent.

    Roxton says nothing, no words of comfort, perhaps sensing that words cannot possibly be enough, but he resumes his gentle stroking of Malone’s back and softly kissing the top of Malone’s head until the reporter at last drops into a peaceful doze, still wrapped in his lover’s arms.

 ~

    He is dreaming of walking in the warm sunshine with Roxton by his side, with Professor Challenger and his wife walking arm in arm together up ahead and Professor Summerlee pottering along behind them. Around them there is the buzz of insects and the musical chirping of birds. Some way off a dog barks and distantly he hears the clopping of a horse’s hooves on the road.

    Malone sits up with a start.

    “Mm, Neddy, what’s wrong?” Roxton asks, cracking open one eye.

    “Do you hear that?”

    “Hear what?”

    “A horse! A horse’s hooves!” Malone throws the bedcovers aside and bolts from the bed, moving to the window still stark naked. “John!” And he starts laughing loudly, so much so that Roxton sits up and peers at him with concern.

   “Ned?”

    “Come look, John, it’s wonderful.”

    Yet even as he steps from the bed himself, wrapping a sheet around himself, Roxton hears the clip-clop of hooves, and then he notices the other sounds, the tweeting of birds, next a cough, not from someone in the house with them but distinctly coming from outside in the yard.

    “John!” Malone turns to face him now, eyes shining. “They’re alive.” And he seizes Roxton’s hand and drags him to the window where Roxton can look out alongside him and see the old cab horse climbing the slope, the driver hunched on the box and a young man leaning out of the window of the cab seemingly in a state of some excitement. Here and there too birds dart across the sky and as he watches the distant golfers even begin to resume their game, whilst somewhere a dog begins barking. “My God, John.” Malone turns back to him, eyes wide with wonder. “What can this mean? Were we all deluded? Dreaming?” But as he runs a hand through his hair he feels the sting of that blister on his palm caused by the frayed bell-rope in the city.

    “I doubt it, young fellah.” Roxton draws Malone, now trembling with excitement, close to him. “Dooced odd turn of events if we were to all have the same dream, yet I can’t say as I understand just what is goin’ on.”

    “They were all dead, yet now they live!” Malone darts away from him, heading towards the door. “We must talk to the others! Come along, John.”

    “Ned!” Roxton bolts after him, equally nimble despite his greater age, and grasps Malone by the arm. “Ned, young fellah, best if you put some clothes on first, don’t want to scare Mrs Challenger, what!”

    Malone looks down at himself, blushing deeply as he realises his error. “Yes, of course.” He begins to laugh then, with real mirth now mingled with a great sense of relief, and Roxton joins in too as they begin to retrieve their scattered clothing.

    They both redress hurriedly, trying to make themselves and the room more presentable whilst not wishing to delay discovering what has occurred.

    “Steady, young fellah,” Roxton says, as Malone rushes downstairs. “Don’t want you trippin’ on the stairs and breakin’ your neck after all that.”

    Though Malone hardly heeds him as he heads down into the hall and Roxton, following him more sedately, is left to roll his eyes and smile fondly at the exuberance of youth.

    The hall door is open and Malone can hear their other companions outside in the yard, voices raised and letting out cries of amazement and congratulation. Gone is the sombre silence and now there is joy and laughter mingling with the confusion. Austin too has awoken and sits upon the step of the car now, and Mrs Challenger even kisses every one of them in turn, so overwhelmed is she at this miraculous mass resurrection, an act which makes Roxton shift his feet awkwardly and Malone blush deeply, glancing at Roxton then. Roxton looks back at him, understanding that Malone would like to kiss him also, as he would like to kiss Malone very much, but that now some semblance of normality has returned they dare not do such a thing in public.

  

   “Catalepsy, huh,” Roxton remarks a while later with a contemptuous snort, repeating the word that Challenger applied to the matter of the seemingly dead. “Damned strange state of affairs and no mistakin’ it.” He has withdrawn with Malone to one side of the drawing room, seeking solace with him there away from the rest of the group, having grown bored with the repeated arguing going on between Challenger and Summerlee. “I tell you, young fellah,” he says, waving his cigar idly in Malone’s direction, “the memory of all those starin’ eyes and rigid bodies and those awful grins ain’t gonna leave me any time soon, catalepsy or not. They damned well _looked_ dead to me.”

    “And to me, though of course… still there was such a great loss of life.” Malone looks down at his shoes for a second or two, thinking of those for whom, sadly, the death was not merely temporary, those killed in the train crashes, car crashes, house fires and all other manner of incidents brought about by the cataleptic trance all living things had fallen into.

    “Best not to dwell on that too much, young fellah,” Roxton advises, putting two fingers beneath Malone’s chin, tilting up his head. “Nothin’ you can do for ‘em, and they surely passed peacefully at any rate, all they’d know was goin’ to sleep. They wouldn’t have known what hit ‘em.”

    “Yes, yes, I know.” Malone looks into Roxton’s eyes for a second or two. “John…”

    “Yes, my lad?” Roxton enquires before taking a pull on his cigar.

    “I fear that… had the rest of the world truly been devoid of life, I’d have gone insane shortly. I fear we might all have gone insane shortly with the grief and the horror of the thing, but I feel that… being with you would have made it that bit better for as long as we lasted. I think I could have endured the rest so long as I had you.”

    Roxton grins at him around the cigar. “Same here, young fellah. Still can’t say as I relished the thought of us bein’ left alive with old Challenger and Summerlee arguin’ with each other non-stop though, what!”

    Malone laughs at this, feeling better able to find real amusement in the situation now that that terrible, oppressive belief in being one of only five or six human beings left alive has suddenly been lifted. He rests his hand lightly against the lapel of Roxton’s jacket. “John, may I confess something?” He lowers his gaze once more.

    Concerned, Roxton removes the cigar from between his lips. “What, my lad? What’s wrong, Neddy?”

    “It’s just… it’s so horribly selfish. I am so very happy that most people survived the poison after all, and all the other living creatures too. Of course I am; the thought of everything dying was intolerable, even the thought of all the little birds and the insects and those creatures I never even gave much of a thought too before, I am glad even they are not really all dead. I’m glad too that because of Challenger’s actions I’ve got myself what may well be the journalistic scoop of all time.”

    “But?”

    “But I suppose…” Malone glances away, guilt-stricken at the thoughts running through his mind. “I suppose there is a tiny part of me that feels sorrow that normality has returned after all, and now that you and I… Well…”

    “I understand,” Roxton says softly, kindly. “I do, Ned. I didn’t wish to spend more time with you at the expense of all life on earth and still don’t and I reckon you feel the same, but I do regret that normality has a dooced annoyin’ habit of conspirin’ to keep us apart.” With his free hand he reaches down and lifts Malone’s right hand to his lips. Malone feels the brush of Roxton’s lips, his moustache too, over his knuckles as Roxton lightly kisses the back of his hand. “I won’t lose you though, Neddy young fellah, you can be sure of that, the rules and laws be damned. We’ve spent too much time apart of late and I intend for us to make amends for that.”

    Malone laughs again, but there’s still this strange feeling in his chest, he notes. The heaviness of grief and the almost overwhelming sense of loss may have gone but there is still something else, some strange constriction of his heart specifically when he looks into Roxton’s face. How queer to think that he, Edward Malone, a grown man (even if Professor Challenger does have a habit of treating him like a small boy) should feel almost… _love-sick_. Queerer still though is the notion that the fierce soldier, fearless hunter and renowned sportsman Lord John Roxton might actually feel the same. To have endured so much in the space of a few hours though seems to have softened even Roxton for the moment. Malone already has long known him to be gentle and tender in private, as violent and forceful as he may be in other spheres, but now there is a softness, a mistiness, in Roxton’s eyes that he has never seen before.

    “Come away with me, Ned,” he says. “After this I reckon you deserve a holiday.”

    “I shall have to return to London tomorrow. McArdle wishes to hear from me in person then, and I’m certain this story will keep me busy for days yet.”

    “Well, in a few days’ time then, when the initial excitement about this all blows over.”

    “Away where?”

    Roxton shrugs. “Tibet?” he says with feigned nonchalance, as if he has not had this location in mind already and is merely pulling a place name out of thin air.

    Malone laughs again. “Hunting snow leopards? That’s your interest, not mine.”

    “Well…” Roxton presses that little bit closer to him and drops his voice to a low, conspiratorial tone. “I’m certain, young fellah, we could find one or two other interestin’ things to do together.”

   “I suppose we could.” Malone grins, then glances towards the others. “Do you reckon they would notice if we slipped off to bed?”

    “Challenger’d not notice if we discharged an elephant gun behind him now he’s off again with his theorisin’, what! I fear that that good woman Mrs Challenger may be slightly more astute however.”

    “Well, perhaps we had best make our excuses then before retiring.”

    “Perhaps we should.”

    Malone pulls away from Roxton to return to speak to the rest of the group and give their excuses, that they are both very tired after having so little sleep the night before and after the excitement of the day too. This gains them a cheery “Good-night you dear gentleman!” from a still somewhat overly emotional Mrs Challenger, a distracted “Good-night then,” from Summerlee and merely a vague grunt in their direction from Challenger, who is still engrossed in his discussion.

    This reaction, or lack of one, from Challenger causes Roxton to walk away faintly quaking with silent mirth, until when he is sure they are safely out of earshot he chortles out loud. “I’m half-tempted to try with an elephant gun for real next time he invites us over,” he says, slapping Malone on the back. “Well then, my lad.” They halt there together on the landing, standing face to face. “Your room or mine?”

    “I fear it would be unforgivably rude to make a mess of two beds in one day,” Malone answers.

    “Yours, then.” So saying this, Roxton grabs him by the hand and leads him into the guest room assigned to Malone for the night.

    Come tomorrow, normality will have to fully resume itself; they will have to be more careful again, more discreet, but for tonight in this bed, in this room, behind a locked door, they are alone together in the dark, held in each other’s arm, Malone and Roxton, Ned and John, while the rest of the world carries on outside.


End file.
